Last night on television: Sport Relief Does The Apprentice (BBC1) - 10 Days to War (BBC2)

By James Walton

12:01AM GMT 12 Mar 2008

By James Walton

The opening scene of BBC1’s Sport Relief Does The Apprentice offered us the rare sight of Sir Alan Sugar being rather twinkly – admittedly in a slightly menacing way, but twinkly nonetheless. “I’ve got your CVs here,” he told the 10 participating celebrities with an almost imperceptible smile, “just in case some viewers might not know who you are.” He then went for a rather risqué gag about HM the Queen.

But before long, it was down to business. The two teams of five men and five women were each given three days to stock an empty shop in the West End. They had to get their goods by any means necessary – and sell tickets, ideally to fellow celebrities for a big sale on the final evening.

Once the task was under way, it was soon clear that the blokes never stood a chance. The women’s team was led by Jacqueline Gold, head of Ann Summers, and included the ever-competent presenters Clare Balding and Kirstie Allsopp. As Wag and model respectively, Louise Redknapp and Lisa Snowdon had exactly the right connections for both blagging expensive clothes and attracting the kind of celebrities who might buy them. The boys, meanwhile, had the less promising line-up of comedian Hardeep Singh Kohli, presenter Nick Hancock, ex-Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie, Lembit Opik MP and former England cricketer, Phil Tufnell.

Sure enough, within a couple of hours the girls’ team had named their shop, were working on a logo and had sent their more glamorous members on a trawl of London’s glitzier stores. The boys, however, were still fighting about who should be leader – Kohli having resigned in a camp strop when MacKenzie told him not to behave as if he were annexing Poland (he didn’t cheer up much when his request to Opik and Tufnell to email the logo to his BlackBerry was met with baffled stares).

Sir Alan then provided each team with a PR adviser. The girls got Max Clifford, who immediately arranged an auction of two tickets for the final of American Idol as guests of his client, Simon Cowell. The boys got “It girl” Tamara Ecclestone, who suggested inviting some rich people if possible. Well before the end though, the question wasn’t who’d win, but whether the girls would do so before Allsopp killed Gold, who gave a master class in how to be bossy and patronising at the same time.

The programme continues on Sport Relief night on Friday (BBC1), when Sir Alan’s initial task won’t be easy. He’s got to decide which of the men to sack first.

Considered purely as drama, the 10-minute playlets in 10 Days to War (BBC2) are perhaps a bit stilted in tone, and certainly more concerned with providing information than anything else. As journalism, though, they’re terrific: creating, in their unforced way, a growing sense of impending disaster as the Iraq war approaches.

On Monday, for example, we saw a Foreign Office lawyer resigning because the war was illegal (although the programme made a strong case that the famous second UN resolution was only ever a fantasy of Tony Blair’s). On Tuesday, the Americans suddenly ditched the planned provisional government for postwar Iraq, apparently as a rare sop to the Brits.

Last night’s episode featured Major General Tim Cross (Stephen Rea), who, five years ago yesterday, flew back to London with what should have been a terrifying message. Having been sent to find out US plans for the post-Saddam era, he’d discovered there weren’t any. As he trekked around various Whitehall departments in a doomed attempt to warn the government of the implications, he became a kind of modern-day Cassandra: able to predict the future, but unable to convince anybody to believe him – or admit that they did.